Language makes culture, and we make a rotten culture when we abuse words.

We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.

What we remember from childhood we remember forever - permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen.

After a certain number of years, our faces become our biographies.

To want to be what one can be is purpose in life.

If we had to say what writing is, we would have to define it essentially as an act of courage.

Is there a word more passionate than passion? Obsession, total immersion, the feeling that everything else doesn't matter.

To imagine the unimaginable is the highest use of the imagination

In saying what is obvious, never choose cunning. Yelling works better.

The power of language, it seems to me, is the only kind of power a writer is entitled to.

Traveling is seeing; it is the implicit that we travel by.

Gus leaned back in his chair, appearing satisfied."Good, " he said. "Cause Maggie's all the nightmare I can take."I smiled. "Gus, I never knew you dreamed of me." He gave me a one-fingered salute

This reasonable moderator, and equal piece of justice, Death.

ABBA was a direct influence on me.

Uncharged with invisible meaning, the visible is nothing, mere clay; and without visible circumstance, a territory, to connect to, our spirit is shapeless, nameless, and undefined.

I've been trying to pick up painting but it's hard.

To see rich land eaten away by erosion, to stand by as continual cultivation on sloping fields wears away the best soil, is enough to make a good farmer sick at heart.

People are more likely to pass me on the street without recognizing me, and that's good.

I always feel that as the author, once I know what a character is ashamed of, then I can go about making her truthful on the page.

What you see is so much less than what you get.

Everybody likes to have a place to think, to meditate, to eat a burrito.